Hey Blog! On Thursday I attended a workshop trying something I’d never thought much about before – making natural pigments!
If you are a regular reader, you will know I am very interested in history and prehistory, and I am currently doing an Arts Award on the subject of prehistoric art. The ancient peoples knew the colour properties of the different rocks and soils, which is most evident in the cave art, but it is highly likely they used pigment in other ways too – for example as decoration or magic marks. Either way, they knew how to use it to make good art – which to my mind has in some ways never been surpassed! The variety of colours able to be made is remarkable, and though today’s synthetic acrylic paint makes brightly coloured paintings, ancient techniques create more sustainable, subtle, and infinitely more mysterious pictures. The most known ones are the ochres, browny-red-to-yellow pigments that were used by cultures from thousands of years ago to the present day; we used some examples of these in the workshop. I know I said natural colours are more muted tones, but even so it’s surprising at first quite how bright the colours produced are – sandstone produced a vibrant red and ash created hole-dark black! It’s quite intriguing how many different things contain pigment – unassuming soil, pieces of cliff, slate, even brick!
The process for making almost any paint is rather simple, but refining it is a bit more tricky. You start by grinding up your chosen pigment, with or without a little bit of water, in a pestle-and-mortar (NOT Mum’s one kept for spices!) and reducing it to a powder. You can use it at that stage if necessary, but it will be lumpy and full of grit – not ideal for paint! To make it better, you can levigate it – no, not levitate, but levigate, a way to separate the finer granules from the thicker granules, in which your ground-down pigment is swirled around in a jar of water and the heavier sediment sinks while the lighter pigment sits on top. This is also a good way to remove sticks and roots that have got in by accident! Once the water on top is clear, it can be poured out carefully and then the jar is swilled again, more gently, and the pigment comes out. When the pigment is tipped into a tray and allowed to dry, it can then be brought to the next stage.
Here, you have another choice. You can mull the paint, or can use it as it is – as it is will result in gritty stuff, but less gritty than the straight-ground. Mulling will make a smooth paint, as the pigment is once more rubbed and powdered, but in this process a binder is added – whether your paint is a watercolour or oil will depend on this stage. Oil paint is just that – oil is added as you mull it and the paint can then be used – but watercolour, which we tried, has a mainly water binder with a little other stuff added. To mull, you use a very heavy and smooth weight on a glass chopping board or similar – we used an old iron iron, which nearly stuck several times, but was very effective – the paint created was fine as any watercolour I’ve seen, and in some ways even better!
The person running the workshop told us there were many materials that could be found locally that would yield pigments, so in the future I will be most likely making my own paint – and painting my own pictures! This will mean I can almost create every element needed for painting – just the brush to go. Hmmmm, I wonder?!